A new al Qaeda-linked militant group has become an unexpected major factor in the Mideast.  It’s called “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant” (ISIS) – Levant being the geographic term for the eastern Mediterranean roughly from Turkey to Egypt – and it has successfully exploited the security voids in Iraq and Syria.

On the Iraq side of the border, the group has proven so formidable that it has taken control of the city of Fallujah.  Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is asking residents of the embattled city to help force out the invaders, to ensure that “their areas are not subjected to the danger of armed clashes.”

Baghdad says ISIS is smuggling weapons into western Iraq from the war next door, trying to carve itself out a new state in the region.

“Because of what is happening in Syria and the new ammunition and missiles they received from Saudi Arabia into Syria, they managed to smuggle quite a vast quantity of equipment to fight the Iraqi people,” said Maliki’s advisor Saad al-Mutalabi.

But on the Syrian side of the border, the foreign fighters are taking casualties, from forces that were once allied in the rebellion against President Bashir al-Assad.  The bodies of black-clad ISIS fighters lie in the streets of Raqqa in eastern Syria.

One is the Mujahideen Army, an alliance of eight brigades who accused the al-Qaida affiliate of hijacking their struggle and “undermining stability and security in liberated areas” via theft, kidnapping and trying to impose their own brand of Islam.  The Islamists have grown larger, more powerful, and more destructive than the Free Syrian Army, which western powers had hoped would control the Islamists as they fought to dislodge Assad from power in Damascus.